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Christmas survival

17 December 2023

5 min read

How to ruin Christmas

Actor turned vicar Natalie Garrett, recounts the perils of being a Christmas Pro.

Natalie Garrett

Natalie produces and narrates The Seen & Unseen Aloud podcast. She's an Anglican minister and a trained actor.

A nativity seen with wooden figures and hay, amidst which a cat sits in the manger.

Nativity cat, Warsaw, 2012.

Kacper Pempel.

So, during the years of my acting career, I always avoided Panto (oh yes I did). Not because I don’t like Panto, I love a good Panto. But because I didn’t want to work over Christmas. How God will have chortled at that great irony, knowing as he did that as of 2005 (the year I got ordained), I would be working every Christmas for the rest of time.

Christmas is different now. Not only am I ordained, I’m married to a vicar. I’m completely immersed in professional Christmas. And Christmas is a bit different when you’ve turned pro. I won’t go so far as to say that being ordained has ruined Christmas, but it’s certainly changed it. But so has (supposedly) being a grown up.

My “Proper Christmas” will always be the Christmas that I grew up with (is that just me?). I had traditional preparing-for-Christmas jobs that I did every year on Christmas Eve eve: polishing the special cutlery we only used once a year, making the brandy butter (which is a bit odd now I think about it, being that heavily involved with brandy from the age of six) and decorating The Tree. And having the annual argument with my sister about whose turn it was to take the present to our neighbours across the road. And eating a lot of satsumas. And chocolate. And seeing my cousins and playing Trivial Pursuit. All of which looks very rosy seen through the eyes of a child. Christmas is different when you’re ordained and you have to work, but it’s also very different when you’re the grown up.

I used to think my mother made a ridiculous amount of fuss about Christmas. I am now that same mother. I think it’s Michael McIntyre who does a whole routine about women starting to write their Christmas To Do lists in October and endlessly shrieking, “there’s so much to do!” That’s me folks. Christmas as a grown up – or at least for this grown up – feels like there’s so much to do!

I always imagine (unhelpfully fantasize) that Other People’s families are living the Christmas dream – the relaxed, cosy evenings drinking hot chocolate or eggnog in front of a roaring fire; laughing and playing wholesome games happily and peacefully with their angelic children, wearing matching Christmas jumpers. In the cold light of day, I realise that, actually, most people find Christmas stressful for a million different reasons. It’s not all twinkly and bright.

For many people, Christmas means seeing all the family that they avoid during the rest of the year. It means spending money they can ill-afford on presents that may not be wanted. Christmas means missing the people who aren’t with us anymore. It means endless advertising campaigns suggesting that you aren’t living the perfect life – but that if you buy a new sofa, you’ll salvage the ruins of your life just in time for a perfect, twinkly Christmas.

And so the life of the mythical twinkly, “magical” Christmas lives on. With little or no reference to its origin story.

I was the chaplain at a Church of England secondary comprehensive school for seven years. In my first term, putting together the carol service, I asked a class chapel rep if she would do one of the Bible readings. “Oh, is Christmas in the Bible?” Huh. Another conversation I had went along the lines of, “Miss, I don’t believe in Jesus and all that religious stuff. But I believe in the spirit of Christmas.” Huh.

There’s a song in the staged musical version of the film Nativity, which is to all intents and purposes a Christmas prayer. But instead of the prayer being directed at God, it is directed at Father Christmas;

Dear Father Christmas, make our wish come true

Dear Father Christmas send your spirit through

There are Children in the world who need you way more than we do

But Father Christmas, we still believe in you

Dear Father Christmas make our wish come true

Which brings me to a difficult moment in my Christmassy life. I have a parenting policy that demands that I tell my children the truth. Whatever the question, if I know the answer, I will give it to them honestly. So, when my children were around the ages of four and six, in the middle of Sainsbury’s, with both children piled into the trolley, in mid-November, surrounded by early Christmas-abilia, one of my children asked me, “Mummy, does Father Christmas really exist?”. (SPOILER ALERT!!). I had to give an honest answer. If the question had been less straight, if there had been any wriggle room at all, I would have fudged it. But a straight question deserved a straight answer. Which, wide-eyed, they went and shared with their friends. A crowd of angry parents from their Primary school came to church to complain that the Vicar’s children had ruined Christmas.

But my point was that if I were to tell my children that I believe Father Christmas exists and that he grants Christmas wishes, were they ever to find out that I had lied (ahem), how would they trust me when I say that I believe Jesus does exist and that he does answer prayers? The challenge has lived with me ever since: how to keep Christmas rooted in Christ without ruining the Christmas magic.

Well, my saving grace is that I’m still a sucker for a bit of Christmas schmaltz. The theologically sensitive part of me absolutely abhors Away in a Manger (“no crying he makes”? Really? He was a new-born baby, of course he cried!!) and Little Donkey (in the Bible accounts there is absolutely no mention of donkeys at all. Not a single one – not on the road, not in the stable. No cows, no donkeys.) But light some candles, get the children singing and I have tears pouring down my face with the best of them, loving every moment.

But that still doesn’t mean that the essence of Christmas is the twinkly magic. Because, of course, the first Christmas was neither twinkly nor magic. Nor did it involve a perfectly curated tablescape (which I also love at Christmas). It didn’t involve any the stereotypical Christmassy things that we all get stressed about and love in equal measure. The first Christmas was messy and difficult. But it was also the most real, most genuinely joyous event in human history. Apart from Easter. Don’t get me started on chocolate bunnies….

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Work

10 September 2025

4 min read

Can KPIs really measure what matters?

Distilling down worth risks losing something sacred

Rick Hansen

Rick writes and speaks on leadership, transformation, and culture.

Which box this year?

Yogi Atmo on Unsplash

I remember recently when I was reduced to a data point. I became an inconvenient name on a spreadsheet.

"Your services are no longer needed. We have to let you go," he stated with feigned empathy. Just like that, years of my work and contributions - hours, days, weeks, months - ceased to matter. I didn't matter. "HR will contact you shortly to explain the final details. Again, I am truly sorry."

The Zoom meeting ended, the camera went blank. I sat in my home office, staring at the blank screen of the company-issued laptop. The only sounds were the disheveled thoughts scrambling in my head and the gentle hum of the fan circulating cool air from the ceiling above. All went quiet. Just like that I was reduced to a KPI - a key performance indicator.

Having spent years in the business world, I'm well-acquainted with its dynamics, including hiring and firing. I recognize ambition and its relentless pursuit of progress. Still, it felt like a personal blow, like a scene on Instagram or YouTube you replay endlessly on loop, trying to comprehend, trying to make sense of it all.

As your value is quantified and found wanting, a sacred inner part of you perishes. In that moment, it’s hard to feel the wonder and mystery of your creation. You don’t feel what for centuries has been called the imago Dei - that we humans are made in God’s image. Instead, you think about how you were just told “we don’t need you.” You think about paying your bills? How will this impact your career? Where will you find your next job?

As a leader, I understand metrics are crucial for business. However, this pervasive culture of metrics has warped our perception of worth. Instead of marveling at the wonder of being made in the image of God, we have become trained to value only what can be counted. We’ve become both deaf and blind to the unquantifiable beauty of human existence.

We’ve prioritized metrics over people. We’ve created a world where efficiency presides over meaning and productivity overshadows purpose. Ironically, this has crippled entire organizations, not optimized them. Critical components like morale, engagement, and productivity are at an all time low. Just check the numbers. (See what I did there)

We have built a ruthless culture defined by a dehumanizing machinery of metrics. People have become problems to be optimized rather than mysteries to be revered.

If we let our job define us and if as leaders we let it define our mystery and those we lead, we succumb to a cancerous, spiritual violence. To treat a person as a set of outputs is to willinging deny our capacity to reflect a divine truth.

Does it have to be this way?

William Blake's poem, "The Divine Image," eloquently conveys a core theological principle: humanity mirrors the divine, embodying God's very image. We are an irreducible, immeasurable value.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love

Is God, our father dear

And Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love

Is Man, his child and his care.

Are we imago Dei? Are we the very image of God the first chapter in Genesis speaks of?

Is this true? Are we always irreducible, immeasurable? Or is this just a conversation to have in a broader discussion when contemplating humanity’s place in the cosmos?

What about the workplace? What about when human worth is distilled into key performance indicators that then become the only thing measured, the only things that defines a person’s worth? What happens when our irreducible human value, this imago Dei is distilled to mere data points on business dashboards? To KPIs.

On one hand, nothing happens; we are still a complex mystery of God’s creation. We are still immeasurable, irreducible. We are imago Dei. On the other hand, something does happen to the person. Something sacred is expunged. Our infinite complexity like emotions, dreams, quirks, ideas, feelings, and virtues are reduced and transcribed into metrics and evaluated against random data sets. Perhaps this is where the shallow quip originates? “It’s not personal. It’s just business.”

I mean I get it. In the business world, we are a metrics driven culture, quantifiable data points are seemingly the only identifier of worth. It drives the business, right?

We read in our company handbooks that, “our people make the difference.” In reality, we all know that data is the true currency. It is here, I argue, that the soul gets buried beneath spreadsheets and the image of the divine is lost within a myriad of data sets.

We must raise a quiet but profound rebellion.

Our spirit of God’s very image that thrives in a mutual wonder and shared humanity cannot be replaced by a zero-sum race for higher scores.

Ask someone at work “How are you doing?”, actually listen to them and engage, and only then ask, “How are you doing with your targets?” Metrics are important, but the person behind them is essential.

When we become our job or when we think those we work with are defined only by how well they do their job, we are all vulnerable to this sacred loss. Our goal is not our job. Our purpose is not how and if we hit our metrics. Instead, our sole aim should be to seek how to better understand this mystery of this life - this imago Dei - that we have been given and how to share it with others.

This reminds me of the saying, "Not everything worthwhile can be measured, and not everything that can be measured is worthwhile."

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